Brazil, the world’s coffee powerhouse, is facing a crisis that could shake the very foundation of its iconic industry. Recent findings from Coffee Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group, reveal that the relentless expansion of coffee cultivation is not just clearing forests—it’s setting off a self-defeating spiral that threatens the future of coffee itself. As the global appetite for coffee grows, so too does the pressure on Brazil’s forests. Yet, in a twist of ecological irony, the very act of clearing trees to grow more coffee is making it harder to grow the crop at all.
According to Coffee Watch’s 34-page report, Wake Up and Smell the Deforestation, released on October 24, 2025, at least 312,803 hectares of intact forest were directly cleared for coffee production in Brazil between 2001 and 2023. An additional 737,000 hectares within existing coffee plantations were lost during the same period. When you add up the total forest loss in Brazil’s Coffee Belt municipalities—including indirect causes like road building and land speculation—the figure balloons to over 11 million hectares, or more than 42,000 square miles. As Etelle Higonnet, Coffee Watch’s director, put it, “Coffee essentially punched a Honduras-sized hole in Brazilian forests.” (NPR)
The majority of this loss—77%—has occurred in the Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna that is a linchpin for water supply to the Amazon River and several other major river basins in South America. The Atlantic Forest, or Mata Atlântica, a critically endangered rainforest along Brazil’s eastern coast, has also been devastated. Once spanning 1.2 million square kilometers, only 10% of the Atlantic Forest remains, and much of what has replaced it is coffee. This forest is vital: 60 percent of Brazilians depend on it for water. The report asks, “What replaced it? Largely, coffee.” (Coffee Watch)
The consequences of this deforestation are already being felt by farmers and consumers alike. Rainfall in Minas Gerais, Brazil’s top coffee-producing state, dropped by as much as 50% in 2014—a year that marked a turning point. Since then, eight out of the last ten years have seen rainfall deficits in major coffee zones. The timing of what rain does arrive is increasingly misaligned with the needs of coffee crops, which are notoriously sensitive to weather patterns. Soil moisture is also declining, with satellite data showing drops of up to 25% over six years in key producing regions. The land is quite literally drying out beneath the coffee plants.
“Deforestation for coffee cultivation is killing the rains, which is killing the coffee,” Higonnet told The New York Times. If the trend continues, she warned, “farmers will produce fewer crops even as more forests are destroyed to accommodate more farmland.” The report’s modeling projects that Brazil could lose up to two-thirds of suitable Arabica coffee land by 2050. That’s a sobering prospect, given that Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer and the backbone of the global supply chain.
The link between deforestation and rainfall loss is not just theoretical. Brazilian scientists, in a study published in Nature Communications last month, found that deforestation in the Amazon has led to about a 75% decrease in rainfall there. Trees play a key role in the water cycle: they absorb and release moisture, creating clouds and rain. Cut down the trees, and the rain goes with them. “When you kill the forest, you’re actually also killing the rains, which is exactly what your crop needs to thrive in the long run,” Higonnet explained to NPR.
The impact isn’t confined to Brazil’s borders. In 2024, an intense drought in Brazil contributed to coffee shortages and wild price spikes on the global market, foreshadowing trouble ahead. As conditions in Brazil’s southeastern coffee belt degrade, extreme prices could become the norm by 2050, Coffee Watch predicted. This isn’t just a Brazilian problem—it’s a global one, given that more than two billion cups of coffee are consumed daily worldwide.
Yet, coffee is not the leading cause of deforestation in Brazil. Cattle ranching and soy farming are responsible for an even larger share of forest loss. Still, the role of coffee has been overlooked for too long, says Higonnet. “Even for people who don’t much care about climate change and mass extinction, if they drink coffee and care about having coffee in the long run, this should be very scary for them.” (NPR)
There are solutions on the table. Agroforestry—a land management system that integrates trees with crops—can reduce deforestation, stabilize soil moisture, and improve resilience to drought. However, these sustainable practices are not widely used in Brazil’s coffee-growing areas, largely because they tend to yield less coffee than industrialized production. Aaron Davis, a senior research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, noted, “I think there needs to be an awareness and a mind shift around the implications of purchasing products like coffee.” (NPR)
Market forces are starting to push for change. In 2023, the European Union adopted a law requiring companies to prove that coffee sold in the bloc was not grown on recently deforested land. The EU is the largest coffee market in the world, consuming more than any other country or bloc. To maintain access to this critical market, farmers in Brazil and other major exporters like Vietnam and Ethiopia are preparing to provide geolocation data on their crops’ origins. For Brazil, this means US$2.4 billion in annual coffee exports are at stake.
Brazil, however, has pushed back against the EU’s new rules, calling them “a unilateral and punitive instrument that disregards national laws,” and arguing that they conflict with sovereignty, discriminate against forest-rich countries, and raise production costs. Instead, Brazil has proposed establishing a fund to pay developing countries to protect their forests, suggesting a shift in the economics of deforestation. The debate is ongoing, with the European Commission recently announcing scaled-back requirements and staggered implementation starting in late 2025 or early 2026, pending approval from the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian government, under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has made progress in reducing deforestation in some areas. The country will host the annual United Nations climate conference in the Amazon in November 2025, aiming to advance its environmental vision on the world stage.
For now, the future of coffee—and the forests that sustain it—hangs in the balance. As the world’s thirst for coffee continues unabated, the choices made in Brazil’s coffee belt will ripple through global markets and morning routines everywhere. The report from Coffee Watch is a wake-up call: unless the industry and its consumers embrace more sustainable practices, the world’s favorite morning ritual could become a casualty of its own success.
